Tiffany Johnson is an actress and an artistic director in theater, and she strongly believes in theme songs. 

Inside the Kum and Go theater at the Des Moines Social Club, women sipping on canned wine and water bottles are startled to their feet when the music comes up and Johnson comes out, clapping, singing and prodding her audience up.

Last week’s pitching workshop for women would prove to be different from most. 

Johnson’s day job is as an accountant, but in her free time she works with Pyramid Theatre, the first black theater company in Iowa, founded in 2015. Pyramid Theatre performs two shows a season in the summer, and focuses on education and outreach out-of-season — which is how she came to be tapped by Facebook to lead the June 6 #SheMeansBusiness workshop, as part of Facebook’s Community Boost tour in Des Moines last week. 

“Facebook was really interested in conveying how storytelling is important when it comes to crafting your pitch in the business world, and having skills that involve confidence, and improvisation abilities and being able to market yourself comes into play,” Johnson said. 

Johnson’s audience took on that theme fully — and, whether they expected it or not, found themselves performing in a few short improv sessions as practice. 

“It really kind of goes more hand-in-hand than people think,” Johnson said. “A lot of people think it would be not the most conventional fit to put theater with technology in business.” 

The ability to react in real life to a few “starter sentences” can change how your pitch is perceived, Johnson said. 

“If you don’t believe in your product or service, then you can’t convince another person why they will believe in your product or service. If a person doesn’t know the why they’re doing something, it’s fair to believe that they don’t believe in what they’re doing,” Johnson said. “People can come from a very authentic place, because they are absolutely the expert at what it is that they’re doing.

“When you think about how you have to be able to represent yourself, especially in a workforce that we don’t have as loud of a voice as we would like to have, building those skills of confidence both personally and professionally are what can push a woman over the edge in business,” she added.